The TV shows people risk death to watch

Why fluffy, glossy K-dramas tempt North Koreans to brave the firing squad.

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In most countries, good television is cheap. A monthly Netflix subscription costs less than a takeaway pizza. In North Korea, by contrast, watching a gripping TV drama can cost you your life.

Under the "anti-reactionary thought" law of 2020, no North Korean may consume, possess or distribute the "rotten ideology and culture of hostile forces". That means K-dramas and K-pop, as well as South Korean books, drawings and photographs.

The penalties range from forced labour to prison camp to death.

Human rights groups report multiple executions. In 2022, a 22-year-old farmer was executed for listening to 70 South Korean songs and watching three South Korean films, which he shared with his friends.

Yet, despite the danger, North Koreans avidly tune in to K-dramas.

A survey of defectors in 2016-2020 by South Korea's Unification Ministry found that 83 per cent had watched such shows before defecting.

The rate among other North Koreans may not be as high. But Ms Kang Gyu-ri, who defected in 2023, says of her millennial peers in the north: "They might not say it (publicly), but I didn't know anyone who hadn't watched a foreign video."

What kind of TV shows are worth the risk of death? To answer this question, consider the clunky, earnest fare that North Koreans are supposed to watch.

In A Flower In The Snow (2011), a North Korean movie, the female lead polishes her fiance's shoe at a train station - right before she breaks up with him to commit herself to reviving an old blanket factory and raising orphans. Ultimately, she succeeds in restarting the factory; her ex-fiance tragically dies while delivering equipment to it.

South Korean dramas offer a less totalitarian take on romance.